The notion that HIV/AIDS is infectious and
sexually transmitted is based on a relationship between antibodies claimed
specifically induced by a retrovirus HIV and particular diseases in
certain risk groups. However, the HIV theory has been challenged for well
over a decade in many scientific publications, principally by Peter
Duesberg from the USA and Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos and her colleagues
in Australia. Failure of HIV/AIDS to spread beyond the original risk
groups, and particularly to Western heterosexuals, especially non-drug
using prostitutes, signals that the HIV theory of AIDS is in need of
urgent reappraisal. This has serious implications for both the way science
has been conducted and public health policy and planning. The HIV theory
has cost billions of dollars and locked in enormous amount of energy in
research by thousands of scientists worldwide. So far, it has yet to save
a single life. There is an urgent need to establish a truly independent,
and distinguished international committee to review the current theories
and those that challenge them. There needs to be a co-operative but urgent
reassessment of AIDS.

A theory is a good theory if it
satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of
observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary
elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of
future observations.
-- Stephen Hawking

A BRIEF HISTORY

A Nobel Laureate stirs the
waters

In 1988 Dr. Kary Mullis, the 1993 Nobel prize
winner for Chemistry was employed by the US National Institutes for Health
(NIH) to set up analyses for HIV testing. When preparing his report he
asked a virologist colleague for a reference that HIV is "the
probable cause of AIDS". He was told he did not need one. Mullis was
surprised.(1)

"I disagreed. It was totally remarkable to
me that the individual who had discovered the cause of a deadly and
as-yet-uncured disease would not be continually referenced in the
scientific papers until that disease was cured and forgotten… There
had to be a published paper, or perhaps several of them, which taken
together indicated that HIV was the probable cause of AIDS".
Otherwise, as Mullis was forced to conclude, "The entire campaign
against a disease increasingly regarded as the twentieth-century Black
Death was based on a hypothesis whose origins no one could recall. That
defied both scientific and common sense".

A decade later Mullis was to write, "I
finally understood why I was having so much trouble finding the references
that linked HIV to AIDS. There weren’t any".(2) Indeed, an
interested non-specialist observer, armed with a few contacts and a good
library, merely has to scratch the surface to realise that the HIV theory
of AIDS begs many more questions than it answers.(1-63 *)

The beginnings of AIDS

The few years leading up to the AIDS era and the
discovery of HIV are illuminating. It was a time when a promiscuous
minority of young, "liberated", gay men in a few large American
cities were increasingly developing previously uncommon diseases such as
fatal forms of the malignancy Kaposis' sarcoma and a fungal pneumonia
known as PCP. At the time, whilst it was reasonable to implicate an
infectious microbe transmitted by rampant, indiscriminant sexual practices
interspersed with needle sharing drug taking, the fact that immune
suppression had multiple causes was also known in 1981. Some considered
the diseases resulted from multiple assaults to bodily functions caused by
the many and varied diseases, toxins and treatments that accompanied the
gay and drug taking lifestyle that had evolved during the late 1970s.

Just how extensive these multiple assaults were
was indicated by the English journalist Neville Hodgkinson documenting the
range of infections of just one homosexual, the late Michael Callen in his
book "AIDS The failure of contemporary science: How a virus that
never was deceived the world".(29) "Non-specific urethritis,
hepatitis A, more NSU and gonorrhoea, amoebas [intestinal parasites]-and
hepatitis B, more NSU and gonorrhoea, more amoebas, shigella, non-A, non-B
hepatitis, giardia, anal fissures, syphilis, more gonorrhoea [penile, anal
and oral], gonorrhoea, shigella twice, more amoebas, herpes simplex types
I and II; venereal warts, salmonella; chlamydia; cytomegalovirus (CMV);
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV); mononucleosis and cryptosporidiosis",
("a disease of cattle!"). Indeed, an early US Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) study confirmed that the first 100 men with AIDS had
a median lifetime number of 1120 sex partners.(30) As Callen himself put
it, "I got some combination of venereal diseases EACH AND EVERY TIME
I had sex". Not surprisingly, given the widespread belief of a causal
relationship between immunity and the maintenance of health, in 1981 the
"new" disease became known as Gay Related Immune Deficiency
(GRID). In fact none of the diseases was new. Some were known to occur in
drug addicts and haemophiliacs long before the AIDS era. What was
"new" was their exponentially escalating prevalence in gay men.

Technology and Virology

Coincidental with the beginning of the AIDS era a
technique was developed to classify and count the different types of
lymphocyte white blood cells. It was noticed that some AIDS patients had
diminished numbers of the so called T4 "helper" cell subtype
and, despite lack of proof, the cells were assumed to be dying at the
behest of an agent selectively targeting them. This became the
"hallmark" of AIDS as well forming a measure of the amount of
immune deficiency. In turn, this "immune deficiency", (the
"AID" in AIDS) caused the diseases (the "S" in AIDS)
that constitute the clinical syndrome. The perceptions that T4 cells were
dying and AIDS was infectious led to the theory that AIDS is caused by a
microbial organism.

Five years prior to the AIDS era a few
laboratories around the world were drawing towards the end of a fruitless
search to prove a viral cause for human cancers. During the 1970s, Dr.
Robert Gallo, the central figure as "co-discoverer" of the AIDS
virus, and his colleagues, claimed to have discovered three human
retroviruses. (The name ‘retroviruses’ arises because of the copying
of the RNA which forms the viral "genes" [the genome]
"backwards" into DNA, a direction contrary to that long
considered universal, that is, from DNA into RNA). In 1975 the first human
retrovirus, HL23V, was proposed to cause human leukaemia but by 1980 was
considered an embarrassing mistake, in fact not to have ever existed. Of
the remaining two, one was postulated to cause a specific though rare form
of adult leukaemia and the second is still without a disease. What is
significant is that the latter two retroviruses are said to exhibit a
liking for T4 lymphocytes. This led Donald Francis and Gallo and others to
propose that an existing or closely related retrovirus was the agent
responsible for killing the T4 cells in AIDS patients. When researchers
actively sought and then discovered the same diseases in individuals who
were not gay, retroviruses, as well as retrovirologists, received renewed
interest and GRID became AIDS.

First proclamations

In May 1983 Professor Luc Montagnier and his
colleagues at the Pasteur Institute of Paris published a paper in Science
entitled, "Isolation of a T-Lymphotrophic Retrovirus from a patient
at Risk for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).(64) It is
important to note that the first word in this paper, ‘Isolation’,
serves as a signal that the researcher is claiming proof for the existence
of a new virus. In the interests of science, on several occasions,
Montagnier sent samples of his tissue cultures to the Gallo laboratory in
America with the express understanding these "could be used for
biomedical, biological and molecular biological studies".(65)
However, Montagnier did not claim to have proven his virus was the cause
of AIDS and the French discovery lay on the table until May 1984 when
Gallo and Popovic and their colleagues (66-69) published four papers also
in Science. On the 23rd of April 1984, at a Washington press conference
held two weeks before the papers were published, Margaret Heckler,
Secretary for Health and Human Services, announced that Gallo and his
co-workers had discovered the "probable" cause of AIDS and had
developed a sensitive blood test to detect the virus in the body. A
curative vaccine was predicted within two years. Inexplicably, causation
was proclaimed merely by association and despite "isolation" of
HIV in only 26 of Gallo’s 72 (36%) AIDS patients, or barely a third.
(The frequency of "isolation" is no better today.(70)).

In 1985 the Pasteur Institute alleged that Gallo
had misappropriated their virus. The ensuing conflict, which eventually
reached the American courts, was settled by a negotiated agreement signed
in 1987 by Gallo and Montagnier as "co-discoverers", and US
President Reagan and French Premier Chirac. Nevertheless, the matter drew
the attention of John Crewdson, an investigative journalist, and US
Senator John Dingell. In November 1989, Crewdson published a lengthy
article in the Chicago Tribune newspaper, which provoked an internal NIH
enquiry into suspect data from Gallo's laboratory. A draft report of the
formal investigation written by NIH Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI),
was published in September 1991, in which the principal author Mikulas
Popovic was accused "of misconduct for misstatements and
inaccuracies" that appeared in the first Science paper, and that
Gallo, as laboratory chief, "created and fostered conditions that
give rise to falsified/ fabricated data and falsified reports". The
final draft report of the OSI, completed in January 1992, was immediately
criticised and was followed by a review of the OSI report by the Office of
Research Integrity (ORI), which found Gallo guilty of scientific
misconduct. However, despite the long and costly investigation, the OSI
concluded that Gallo's research "does not negate the central findings
of the [1984] Science paper". According to Eleopulos and her
colleagues, regardless of the material uncovered by the OSI, Gallo's data,
which still remains the best of its kind, does not prove the existence of
HIV and even if it did, nowhere in the papers is their proof that HIV
causes AIDS.(16,21)

Peter Duesberg

In December 1987, three and a half years after
the Washington press conference, Professor Peter Duesberg, virologist and
molecular biologist at the University of Berkeley, California, published
an invited paper entitled "Retroviruses as Pathogens: Expectations
and Reality".(3) Duesberg was a much fêted scientist, considered to
be "the golden boy of virology" and "the greatest living
retrovirologist". He had developed many of the laboratory techniques
for studying retroviruses and their genetic make up, had discovered cancer
causing genes, and was recipient of a $US350,000 "outstanding
investigator" award from the NIH. But Duesberg dropped a bombshell.
He asserted that, apart from the relative few cancer causing retroviruses,
the majority are virtually harmless. Duesberg argued that HIV is
neutralised by antibodies shortly after infection and thus antibodies
signal its containment. He also pointed to data proving that well, sick or
dying from AIDS, HIV positive individuals contain insufficient amounts of
HIV to do harm. Even if HIV were to kill all the T4 cells it had infected
every 1-2 days, the amount of T4 cells needing replacing approximated the
amount of blood shed by a man cutting himself shaving.

For the protagonists, the low "viral
burden", that is, the amount of "HIV DNA" in cells, was a
fact that no one, not even Gallo, could satisfactorily reconcile with an
immune destroying pathogen killing gay men within a year or two of
diagnosis. However, rather than addressing this as a scientific problem
warranting dialogue with someone known to have considerable knowledge of
the subject, Duesberg's questions antagonised Gallo to the point where he
refused to discuss the matter. Meetings convened to deal with the
uncomfortable implications of Duesberg's paper were suddenly cancelled at
the highest level.

In 1989 Duesberg presented further argument.(4)
HIV does not fulfil the postulates nineteenth century bacteriologist
Robert Koch had developed to prove a microbe causes a disease. These four
postulates are one, that the organism must be present in all cases of the
disease; two, that it must be grown and then isolated in pure culture from
the cells of individuals with the disease; three, that it must reproduce
the disease when introduced into a susceptible host or experimental
animals and four, that from whence it must once again be recovered.

According to Duesberg "From every angle, HIV
fails Koch’s first postulate".(1) The second postulate was
fulfilled but only by subjecting cells to drastic chemical manipulation
that did not approach conditions in vivo. Eleopulos has argued how basic
retrovirology has long shown that oxidation which prevails in HIV/AIDS
patients and their cell cultures creates internal (endogenous)
retroviruses in cells whose DNA was not previously infected from the
outside (12,14,15,71,72) (One percent of human DNA, that is, an amount
3000 times larger than "HIV" DNA, is made up of endogenous
retroviral DNA(73)). The third postulate failed because, "During the
past decade, more than four hundred thousand AIDS patients have been
treated and investigated by a system of five million medical workers and
AIDS researchers, none of whom have been vaccinated against HIV… But ten
years later there is not even one case in the scientific literature of a
health worker who ever contracted presumably infectious AIDS from a
patient… AIDS is not infectious". Similarly, "nine years after
the NIH first started infecting chimpanzees with HIV-over 150 so far at a
cost of $40,000-50,000 apiece", all "are still healthy".(5
**)

In 1992, Duesberg shifted focus from HIV to argue
that "AIDS [is] acquired by drug consumption and other noncontagious
risk factors".(5) Apart from illicit and recreational drugs,
Duesberg’s list included the first "anti-retroviral" compound
zidovudine (AZT). In other words, a specific treatment for HIV infection
was a cause of AIDS. Duesberg continued to regard HIV bona fide but an
inert, harmless "passenger" virus linked to AIDS only through
the kinds of activity associated with drug taking (including prescribed
drugs). Duesberg, like others before him, pointed to the epidemiological
data revealing a 50 fold difference in the AIDS "attack rate"
between various groups of HIV positive individuals, as well as the
proclivity of certain AIDS diseases for particular risk groups. Thus 50%
of HIV positive blood transfusion recipients develop AIDS within one year
(but so do 50% of HIV negatives) compared to 1% of haemophiliacs. Kaposis’
sarcoma was to all intents and purposes, confined to gay men.(5,13,74)).
Thus, even if HIV were necessary to cause AIDS, it could not be the only
factor. However, accretion of "co-factors" to the HIV theory
rendered the significance of any particular factor problematic. It was
possible to argue that HIV may be only a minor factor or, at least in
Eleopulos' and Duesberg's minds, not a factor. Apparently the role of HIV
was also a problem for Montagnier. Although he wrote in Nature in December
1984, "all available data are consistent with the virus being the
causative agent of AIDS",(75) in 1985 he expressed an opinion
impossible to reconcile with the HIV theory. "This syndrome occurs in
a minority of infected persons, who generally have in common a past of
antigenic stimulation and of immune depression before LAV [HIV]
infection",(76) that is, cause after effect (italics ours). One must
surmise that within a year, the discoverer of HIV was already hedging his
bets. His recent interview with the investigative journalist Djamel Tahi
(61) (see below), fuels such speculation.

Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos and
the Perth group

Eleopulos’ AIDS research began in 1981. In May
1986 she submitted for publication a paper which refuted every step in the
HIV theory, including HIV itself. She also proposed an alternative,
non-viral theory (of which "Duesberg’s" "Drugs/AIDS
hypothesis" is a subset), and predicated non-toxic and relatively
inexpensive treatments.

Her theory was based on a general theory of
cellular functioning she had formulated in the 1970s as a basis for
unraveling the genesis and improving the treatment of cancer, and to offer
fresh insights into the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases and aging.
Eleopulos postulates that normal cellular functioning is determined by the
level and oscillations of cellular redox (23) (oxidation and its chemical
opposite, reduction). In her view, when oxidation is prolonged or
excessive, cells become abnormal, injured and susceptible to diseases.
Eleopulos had noticed a link between the risk groups. Gay men, drug users
and haemophiliacs are exposed to chemical stressors in the form of semen,
nitrites, illicit drugs and factor VIII (the blood clotting protein
missing from and administered to haemophiliacs). There is abundant
evidence that these substances are potent cellular oxidants.(12) In
Eleopulos’ view, oxidative stress produces low T4 cells and AIDS, as
well as the phenomena inferred as proof for the existence of HIV.

The ready acceptance of the Montagnier/Gallo
1983/84 Science papers posed enormous difficulties for Eleopulos having
her work published. Thus "Reappraisal of AIDS: Is the oxidation
caused by the risk factors the primary cause?" was twice rejected by
Nature eventually finding light of day in Medical Hypotheses twelve months
after Duesberg.(12) However, the editor of this journal also rejected the
paper, only recanting after Eleopulos worked for several months to
convince him that equatorial Africa was not in the grip of an epidemic of
sexually transmitted immunodeficiency and thus not in breach of her
theory.(11,24,63,77)

To paraphrase the theoretical physicist Stephen
Hawking, wrong predictions affirm bad theories, correct predictions make
them powerful. The HIV theory requires that HIV causes all the AIDS
defining diseases and predicts that HIV/AIDS will become a global epidemic
via the oldest and most unstoppable of all human activities. However,
Kaposis’ sarcoma, one of the two diseases for which the HIV theory was
proposed, is no longer attributed either directly or indirectly (via AID),
to HIV.(12,13,54,74,78 §) In the OECD countries the prediction of a
sexual pandemic fails completely. For example, as of the beginning of
1998, 93% of the cumulative deaths from AIDS in Australia occurred in the
original risk groups, that is, gay/bisexual men, drug addicts and
haemophiliacs. This observation fits the classic demographic profile of
non-infectious diseases such as pellagra, beriberi and scurvy which also
remain confined to their risk groups. All are caused by vitamin
deficiencies but in the past were regarded infectious and sufferers
shunned and quarantined. The HIV protagonists also predicted a curative
vaccine by the end of 1986 and an animal model to prove the HIV theory
beyond all doubt. Neither prediction has been fulfilled. A vaccine is not
envisaged before the turn of the century and animals given "HIV"
do not develop AIDS.

On the other hand, the Eleopulos oxidative stress
theory predicts the current demographic data, an apparent loss of T4
cells, the risk of passive anal intercourse in both sexes, HIV positive
and AIDS patients being oxidised relative to normal individuals, the
ameriolation of HIV/AIDS by the use of antioxidants and a non-infectious
animal model. Everyone of these predictions has materialised. Oxidative
stress is well established by hundreds of papers,(14,62,79-81) so much so
that in the early 1990s the Pasteur Institute was advertising
international scholarships to study the phenomenon. In fact this year Luc
Montagnier is the principal editor of a 558 page book devoted to oxidative
stress in cancer, aging and AIDS.(82)

The Eleopulos theory predicts that a decline in
T4 cells can occur without cellular death. In fact, according to the Perth
group, there is no evidence to support the notion that T4 cells are dead,
or that "HIV" kills such cells. In T4 cell cultures, the same
number T4 cells "disappear" regardless of whether one adds
"HIV" or merely the chemical stimulants obligatory to
"grow" the "HIV".(83) Neither is there proof that low
numbers of T4 cells are either necessary or sufficient to produce the
clinical syndrome.(9,12,14) This is a view recently expressed by leading
HIV/AIDS scientists such as Dr. Arthur Anderson from the US Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Disease (84) and Dr. Zvi Grossman at the
University of Tel Aviv.85

In other words, the central tenet of the HIV
theory, virus induced killing of immune cells leading to AIDS, is now
being questioned by HIV/AIDS experts themselves. Nonetheless, and despite
so much evidence to the contrary, the orthodox view remains entrenched. In
fact, since 1993 the low numbers of T4 cells has been enshrined in the
1993 CDC AIDS definition whereby AIDS can be diagnosed without a disease.
Just as "co-factors" were proposed to rescue the HIV theory in
the mid 1980s, in July 1998 Chen and colleagues from the UCLA AIDS
Institute, School of Medicine, Los Angeles reported evidence that
"naturally noninfectious virus" or virus or "rendered
defective" by "anti-HIV" drugs, could still contribute to
the loss of T4 cells throughout the course of HIV disease.(86) In other
words, "alive" or "dead", HIV causes immune
deficiency. Such a proposal does not auger well for the use or continued
development of "anti-HIV" drugs.

Consistent also with the Eleopulos oxidatives
stress theory is the direct relationship between high frequencies of
passive anal intercourse and the development of AIDS, as well as the fact
that the only animal model of AIDS is non-infectious. Mice repeatedly
injected with foreign cellular proteins develop a dramatic depletion of T4
cells, Kaposi's sarcoma-like tumors and "abundant"
retroviral-like particles appear in their spleens.(87) Thus AIDS diseases
are followed by the production of retroviral-like particles and not the
other way around.

The demise of scientific
democracy

The longevity of the HIV theory has been
considerably boosted by the virtual refusal of editors of leading medical
journals to publish any material which takes HIV to task. Without these
data, and the stamp of approval engendered by such publication, it is
almost impossible for the debate to reach the ears of those who matter the
most, clinicians and their patients. Like generals directing wars, the
remoteness of editors begets an objectivity which, while essential to
clear thinking, mitigates against an appreciation of the profound
responsibilities editors hold at the bedside. Ultimately, although the HIV
theory is manifoldly problematic, physicians, patients, relatives,
politicians, journalists and the tax paying public are systematically
denied knowledge of its existence and substance. Not only is there is a
total absence anywhere of a disinterested, adjudicated debate, individuals
whose only motivation is to contribute to solving a disease claimed to
afflict millions of people, find themselves censored. For example, the
editor of the world’s most prestigious journal, Nature, denied Duesberg
the right of reply on issues he raised because his views give "many
infected people the belief that HIV infection is not in itself the
calamity it is likely to prove".(29) Yet, in a recent edition of the
same journal, but in another context, there is a claim that "the
voice of sceptics may grow tiresome, but the mainstream is in trouble if
it cannot win a public debate with them". Officials at the Berlin
10th International AIDS Conference confiscated Dutch AIDS analyst Robert
Laarhoven's press pass and threatened him with expulsion from Germany for
"criminal trespass" because he placed copies of the dissident
journal Rethinking AIDS on an "unauthorised" table. Nature has
repeatedly rejected every paper and letter submitted by Eleopulos and her
colleagues since 1986 without providing any scientific reasons and
invariably citing space constraints in the journal. Professor John Kaldor,
one of Australia's foremost "established experts" on AIDS admits
that dissidents "intersperse their cases with grains of
fact".(88) However, because of Kaldor and colleagues’ "strong
instinct not to dignify the sceptics' arguments by attempting to refute
them", arguments based on these "grains of fact" and many
other data, remain unanswered and unresolved.

The rise and fall of the
"anti-HIV" drugs

It would take a second article to discuss AZT and
the many other "anti-HIV" drugs. Suffice it to say there is no
scientific proof that such drugs kill "HIV" or cure AIDS but
there is ample evidence they are harmful.(1,53,56) In 1994, a double-blind
randomised comparison of two policies of AZT treatment (immediate and
deferred) was reported (the Concorde trial). This involved 1749
symptom-free, HIV-infected individuals from centres in the UK, Ireland and
France. The 347 clinical endpoints (AIDS and death) outnumbered the total
of those in all other published trials in symptom-free and early
symptomatic infection. The results showed "there was no statistically
significant difference in clinical outcome between the two therapeutic
policies".(89) In 1995, extended results of Concorde showed a
significant increased risk of death among the patients treated early.
However, despite these data, disclaimers that patients treated with AZT
may continue to develop the AIDS diseases, that the side effects of AZT
may mimic AIDS, and AZT given to non-HIV-infected babies causes the AIDS
defining pneumonia PCP,(90) AZT continues to be the most commonly
prescribed anti-HIV drug. Dr. Donald Abrams, Professor of Medicine and
Director of the AIDS program at San Francisco General Hospital, said
"I have a large population of people who have chosen not to take any
antiretrovirals... I've been following them since the very
beginning...They've watched all of their friends go on the antiviral
bandwagon and die".(91) Indeed, even an elementary study of the
relevant pharmacologicaL literature reveals that AZT cannot be an anti-HIV
drug.(92)

In 1996, the latest drugs, the "protease
inhibitors" (PI) were introduced. These are prescribed as one of up
to 200 possible "cocktails" with AZT or similar drugs. Detailed
data on these drugs of the kind usually reserved for medical
practitioners, appear regularly in glossy, multi-page advertisements in
gay mens’ magazines. At the July 1996 XIth International AIDS conference
Time Magazine Man of the Year David Ho predicted that "scientists
would find new drugs to wipe HIV out of the body within three years
possibly within just one".(93) At the July 1998 XIIth AIDS conference
Ho stated it will take at least ten years of intense combination drug
therapy to kill off all the HIV in an infected person's body but a sizable
percentage of HIV patients will never get close. Many patients cannot
tolerate the untoward effects of these "cocktails" and
measurements show that the DNA "viral" burden does not
decrease.(94-97) In the May 1998 Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences Dr. William Paul, former Director of the National Institutes of
Health's Office of AIDS Research writes, "no matter how long a person
is treated with anti-HIV drugs, there will always be new viruses... you
will have to be treated forever... No one is getting cured... This bodes
extremely poorly for combination therapy as something curative".(85)

Given the toxicity of these drugs, it is unlikely
anyone can tolerate taking them for more than a few years. If this outlook
is gloomy for HIV/AIDS sufferers, it is even worse considering there is no
substantial, alternative therapeutic strategy anywhere on the horizon. The
futility of all "anti-HIV" drugs, past present and future is
best highlighted in a June 1998 interview by Dr. Harold Varmus, Nobel
Laureate retrovirologist and Director of the NIH. "Trying to rid the
body of a virus whose genome is incorporated into the host genome may be
impossible".(98) Indeed, how can a drug rid a body of material so
intimately bound to the host DNA genetic material?

SOME SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS WITH
THE HIV THEORY

The theory versus the
definition

The central premise of the HIV theory of AIDS is
that there exists a unique retrovirus, transmissible via blood and sexual
secretions, which induces specific antibodies, kills T4 cells whose
relative absence then causes the appearance of approximately 30 diseases
which constitute the clinical syndrome. The theory however is rendered
completely contradictory by the official AIDS definition used clinically.
In Australia an individual is diagnosed AIDS if he or she fulfills the
criteria set out in the latest (1993) revision of the US "CDC
surveillance case definition for AIDS".(99) (Other definitions in use
around the world make scientific comparisons almost impossible. In Africa
AIDS is diagnosed on symptoms and without blood tests (100)). Since from
1985 the CDC "accepts" HIV as the cause of AIDS, it should not
be possible to diagnose AIDS by any means inconsistent with the HIV
theory. However, even a cursory reading of the 1993 definition reveals
AIDS can be diagnosed with the imprimatur of the CDC: with Kaposis’
sarcoma which even Gallo (54) accepts is not caused by HIV, in the absence
of immune deficiency, "without laboratory evidence of HIV
infection" and, extraordinarily, "in the presence of negative
results for HIV infection"(101) (italics ours).

Sexual transmission

HIV/AIDS is claimed to be bidirectionally
sexually transmitted. Data to support this claim is based not upon
microbial isolation and contact tracing as is the orthodox practice for
proving diseases are infectious and sexually transmitted (STD), but on
mostly retrospective studies of highly selected groups of individuals
including gay and bisexual men, heterosexual men and women including
prostitutes, for antibodies in blood which react certain proteins deemed
"HIV specific". Included in these studies are estimations of
risk factors for the specific sexual practices of penile insertive,
vaginal, anal receptive and oral receptive intercourse.

Gay men

In 1984 Gallo and his colleagues showed that
"Of eight different sexual acts, a positive HIV antibody test
correlated only with receptive anal intercourse" (102). They also
found the more often a gay man has insertive anal intercourse the less
likely he was to become HIV positive. This is incompatible with an
infectious cause. In 1986 Gallo and his colleagues reported they
"found no evidence that other forms of sexual activity, contribute to
the risk" of HIV seroconversion in gay men.(103) In an extensive
review of 25 studies of gay men reported in 1994 by Caceres and van
Griensven, the authors concluded that " no or no consistent risk of
the acquisition of HIV-1 infection has been reported regarding insertive
intercourse".(104) In the West, the largest and most judiciously
conducted prospective epidemiological studies such as the Multicenter AIDS
Cohort Study (MACS) of 4955 gay men (105) have proven beyond all
reasonable doubt that in gay men the only significant sexual act related
to becoming HIV antibody positive is receptive anal intercourse. Thus in
gay men, AIDS may be likened to the non-infectious condition, pregnancy.
It is acquired by the passive partner but is not transmitted to the active
partner.

Significantly, the MACS also showed that once a
gay man becomes HIV positive, progression to AIDS is further determined by
the amount of passive anal intercourse sustained after
"infection". This is contrary to all that is known about
infectious diseases. Infection, not repeated infections, causes disease.
Indeed, although the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons considers HIV
positive surgeons "to be infectious and should not perform invasive
procedures or operations. However, "(t)hey may provide these services
to patients who have the same infection".(106)

Heterosexuals

The largest and best conducted studies in
heterosexuals including the European Study Group (107) show that for
women, the only sexual practice leading to an increased risk of becoming
HIV antibody positive is anal intercourse. The unidirectional transmission
of "HIV" observed in OECD countries is supported by Nancy
Padian's ten year study of heterosexual couples (1986-1996).(108) There
were two parts to this study, one cross-sectional, the other prospective.
In the former "The constant per-contact infectivity for
male-to-female transmission was estimated to be 0.0009 [1/1111]". The
risk factors for the women were: (i) anal intercourse;. (ii) having
partners who acquired this infection through drug use (Padian says that
this means the women may also be IV drug users); (iii) the presence of
STDs. (antibodies to their causative agents may react in an
"HIV" antibody test (15,20) Of the HIV negative male partners of
82 positive female cases only 2 became HIV positive but under
circumstances considered ambiguous by Padian. In the prospective study,
starting in 1990, 175 HIV-discordant couples were followed for
approximately 282 couple-years. At entry, one third used condoms
consistently and in the six months prior their last follow up visit, 26%
of couples consistently failed to use condoms. There were no
seroconversions after entry including the 47 couples not using condoms
consistently. Based on the 2/86 men who became HIV positive in the early
study, the risk to a non-infected male from his HIV positive female
partner was reported to be in the order of 1/9000 per contact. From this
statistic one can calculate that on average, a male would need to have
6000 sexual contacts with an infected female to achieve a 50% chance of
becoming HIV positive. At three contacts per week this would take 56
years, or a life time.

Prostitutes

The notion that HIV is a virus which "does
not discriminate" is also markedly inconsistent with the data
obtained from studies of female prostitutes. Even if, as it is widely
accepted, by some unknown means a sexually transmitted infectious agent
found its way into the promiscuous portion of the gay male population in
certain large cities in the United States in the late 1970s, given the
facts that prostitutes are frequented by bisexual men and, at the very
earliest, "safe" sexual practices date from 1985, one would have
expected HIV/AIDS to have spread rapidly through prostitutes and thence to
the general community. However, the prevalence of "HIV"
antibodies amongst prostitutes is almost entirely confined to those who
are drug users. Virtually all other prostitutes have not been, and are not
becoming, HIV positive.

In September 1985, 56 non-intravenous drug using
(IVDU) prostitutes were tested "In the rue Saint-Denis, the most
notorious street in Paris for prostitution. More than a thousand
prostitutes work in this area…These women, aged 18-60, have sexual
intercourse 15-25 times daily and do not routinely use protection".
None were positive.(109)

In Copenhagen, 101 non-IVDU prostitutes, a
quarter of whom "suspected that up to one fifth of their clients were
homosexual or bisexual", were tested during August/October 1985. The
median numbers of sexual encounters per week was 20. None were
positive.(110)

In 1985, 132 prostitutes (and 55 non-prostitutes)
who attended a Sydney STD clinic were tested for HIV antibodies. The
average numbers of sexual partners (clients and lovers) in the previous
month was 24.5. When an estimate was made to separate clients and lovers,
the median number of sexual contacts per year rose from 175 to 450. The
partners of only 14 (11%) of prostitutes used condoms at all and 49% of
their partners used condoms in fewer than 20% of encounters. No women were
positive.(111)

The same Australian Clinic repeatedly tested an
additional 491 prostitutes who attended between 1986 and 1988. Of 231 out
of the 491 prostitutes surveyed, 19% "had bisexual non-paying
partners and 21% had partners who injected drugs. Sixty-nine percent
always used condoms for vaginal intercourse with paying clients, but they
were rarely used with non-paying partners. Condoms were rarely used by
those clients and/or partners for the 18% of prostitutes practising anal
intercourse". No women were positive.

At the time of this report, a decade into the
AIDS era, the authors also commented, "there has been no documented
case of a female prostitute in Australia becoming infected with HIV
through sexual intercourse" (italics ours). Yet, these investigators
from the Sydney Sexual Health Centre concluded "there are still many
women working as prostitutes in Sydney who remain seriously at risk of HIV
infection".(112) In Spain, of 519 non-IVDU prostitutes tested between
May 1989 and December 1990, only 12 (2.3 per cent) had positive test,
which was "only slightly higher than that reported 5 years ago in
similar surveys". Some prostitutes had as many as 600 partners a
month and the development of a positive antibody test was directly related
to the practice of anal intercourse. The authors also noted, "a more
striking and disappointing finding was the low proportion of prostitutes
who used condoms at all times, despite the several mass-media AIDS
prevention campaigns that have been carried out in Spain".(113)

Similar data from two Scottish studies,(114) the
1993 "European working group on HIV infection in female prostitutes
study",(115) and a 1994 report of 53,903 Filipino prostitutes tested
between 1985 to 1992, confirm that non-IVDU prostitutes remain virtually
devoid of HIV infection. For example, in the latter study, only 72 (0.01%)
women were found to be HIV positive.

In studies where there appear to be a high
incidence of HIV amongst prostitutes there are uncertainties that defy
explanation. For example, although "HIV has been present in the
commercial sex work networks in the Philippines and Indonesia for almost
as long as it has been in Thailand and Cambodia", the prevalence of
HIV in the former is 0.13% and 0.02% respectively and 18.8% and 40% in the
latter.(116) If these are accurate data, the discrepancy defies
epidemiological explanation and has indeed baffled the experts although
the latter postulate "behavioural factors" such as one
country’s prostitutes and clients being considerably more or less
sexually active than another. However, one could also pose another
question. What are the "HIV" antibody tests actually measuring?
Be that as it may, since 5674 (44%) and 4360 (34%) of the 12785 Cambodian
"HIV and AIDS Case Reports" till 31/12/97 are listed as
"Unknown" gender and age respectively,(117) data collection, at
least by the WHO in Cambodia, must be regarded as problematic.

Contradictions

Why should HIV avoid non-drug using prostitutes?
If female prostitutes who do not use drugs do not become HIV infected
despite being "seriously at risk of HIV infection", what is the
risk of infection to the majority of Australian women who are neither drug
users nor prostitutes? According to data from the National Centre in HIV
Epidemiology and Clinical Research, vanishingly little. A 1989 study
testing 10, 217 blood samples of newborn babies (unambiguous evidence of
heterosexual activity without condoms), found that no babies or mothers
were HIV positive.(118) If such women remain non-infected, how do their
non-drug using, male heterosexual partners become infected with HIV?

According to Simon Wain-Hobson, a leading HIV
expert from the Pasteur Institute, "a virus's job" is to spread.
"If you don't spread, you're dead". (Weiss, 1998 #1179) The
"overwhelming" evidence from studies both in gay men and
heterosexuals is that HIV/AIDS is not bidirectionally sexually
transmitted. In the whole history of Medicine there has never been such a
phenomenon. Since microbes rely on person to person spread for their
survival, it is impossible to claim from epidemiological data that
HIV/AIDS is an infectious, sexually transmitted disease. Indeed, Professor
Stuart Brody, from the University of Tubingen, has argued that physicians
ignore the actual heterosexual data and instead promote the politically
correct idea that everyone is at risk. "Ideological knowledge about
AIDS is far more likely to filter through society than scientific
knowledge".(37)

THE DIAGNOSIS OF
"HIV" INFECTION

The HIV antibody tests

There are two "HIV" antibody tests in
common use, the ELISA and Western blot (WB). The ELISA causes a colour
change when a mixture of "HIV" proteins reacts with antibodies
in serum from a patient. In the Western blot, "HIV" proteins are
first separated along the length of a nitrocellulose strip. This enables
individual reactions to the ten or so "HIV" proteins to be
visualised as a series of darkened "bands". The Western blot
test is used to "confirm" repeatedly positive ELISAs because
experts agree that the ELISA "overreacts", that is, it is
insufficiently specific.(¥) Prior to 1987, one "HIV specific"
WB band was considered proof of HIV infection. However, since 15%-25% of
healthy, no risk individuals have "HIV specific" WB
bands,(119,120) it became necessary to redefine a positive WB by adding
extra and selecting particular bands, otherwise at least one in every
seven people would be diagnosed infected with HIV. (Notwithstanding, in
the MACS, one band remained proof of HIV infection in gay men until 1990
(121)). On the other hand, although AIDS began to decline in
1987,(122,123) this trend was countered by the addition of more and more
diseases and, most recently, mere laboratory abnormalities to each
revision (1985, 1987 and 1993) of the first, 1982 CDC definition. The net
effect of these changes was to maintain the correlation between
"HIV" antibodies and "AIDS" amongst the
"risk" groups while the risk of an HIV/AIDS diagnosis outside
these groups remained slight. This was further accentuated by avoiding
testing outside the risk groups. However, when such studies were
performed, for example, (a) amongst 89,547 anonymously tested blood
specimens from 26 US hospital patients at no risk of AIDS, between 0.7% to
21.7% of men and 0-7.8% of women aged 25-44 years were found to be HIV WB
positive.(124) (It is estimated that approximately 1% of men are gay.
Also, at the five hospitals with the highest rates of HIV antibodies, one
third of positive tests were in women. Yet men vastly outnumber women as
AIDS patients). (b) the US Consortium for Retrovirus Serology
Standardization reported that 127/1306 (10%) of individuals at "low
risk" for AIDS including "specimens from blood donor
centers" had a positive HIV antibody test by the "most
stringent" US WB criteria (119) (see below). Thus the correlation
between "HIV" antibodies and AIDS, which experts accept as the
only proof that HIV causes AIDS, could not be a statistic related to the
natural, unbridled activity of a virus but is instead a contrivance of
mankind. Not only does correlation never prove causation, the
artificiality of this particular "correlation" disqualifies it
from meaningful scientific analysis.

One of the most bizarre aspects of the HIV/AIDS
theory is that different laboratories, institutions and countries define
different sets of WB bands as a positive test (Figure 1). The global
variation in interpretive criteria means for example, that in Australia a
positive test requires particular sets of four bands. In the USA,
different sets of two or three suffice, which may or may not include the
bands required in Australia. In Africa only one designated set of two is
required. Put simply, this means that the same person tested in three
cities on the same day may or may not be HIV infected. If the diagnosis of
HIV infection were a game of poker, a flush would require five cards the
same suit in one country but only one or two elswhere. A virus cannot
behave in this manner, but, according to the HIV test, which is claimed to
have a specificity of 99.999%,(125) it does.

As incomprehensible as this appears, further
difficulties remain. For example, an Australian tested in Australia with
one or two "HIV specific" bands would not be reported HIV
infected.(101). Clearly however, there must be a reason why an uninfected
individual, such as a healthy blood donor or military recruit can possess
any, even one, "HIV specific" band. According to the experts,
these bands are caused by cross-reacting, that is, "false",
"non-HIV" antibodies which react with the "HIV"
proteins. Thus it is axiomatic that an antibody which reacts with a
particular protein is not necessarily an antibody the immune system has
generated specifically in response to that protein. The Australian
National HIV Reference Laboratory (NRL) concedes that "False
reactivity may be to one or more protein bands and is common"(120)
(20-25%). However Eleopulos argues, if "non-HIV" antibodies
cause "one or more protein bands", then why are they not able to
cause four or five? Or all ten? On what basis do experts assert which
antibodies are "false" and which are "true"? Or, how
the same three bands, caused by "false" non-"HIV"
antibodies, become "true" when accompanied by one extra? On what
basis do experts assert there are any "true" HIV antibodies? If
the Australian traveller were to be tested in the USA, where two or three
bands are sufficient to diagnose HIV infection, are his antibodies
"false" in Australia but "true" as his aeroplane
touches down in Los Angeles?

In 1994, Dr. Elizabeth Dax, the head of the NRL
was asked to justify both the Australian criteria for a positive Western
blot and the global variability.(28) Her response (126) avoided answering
either question and subsequent correspondence failed to pass the editorial
staff at the Medical Journal of Australia. When the same questions were
later put via the Offices of Senator Chris Ellison, Minister for Schools,
Vocational Education and Training, the first question was again unanswered
and the widely different criteria between Australia and Africa were
justified on the basis that in Africa, "comparatively, false
reactivity is far less common [than in Australia] so that interpretation
criteria to define [true] positivity may be less strict".(120)

However, no scientist can make such a claim
without data. All antibody tests are subject to the vagaries of
cross-reactions and the only way to calculate the incidences of
"true" and "false" antibodies is to scrutinise
reactions against what the test is purportedly meant to measure, that is,
against HIV itself. HIV isolation is the only gold standard by which the
specificity of the antibodies can be determined and this must be evaluated
before the test is introduced into clinical practice. However, despite the
WB being in widespread use and "a stalwart" (126) of HIV
testing, these data have never been reported. This is an issue the NRL
chronically and negligently fails to address. Even without such evidence
since, (a) the NRL concedes that cross-reacting antibodies cause
misleading reactions in the WB in one quarter of healthy Australians; (b)
unlike Australians, Africans, (similar to the AIDS risk groups), are
exposed to a multitude of infectious agents producing a myriad of
antibodies each capable of cross-reactions; "false reactivity"
will be much higher in Africa where the WB criteria should be the most
stringent. Indeed, if it is true that "HIV" antibodies prove one
third of heterosexual adults in certain central and east African countries
are infected with HIV, "life in these countries must be one endless
orgy".(39)

If the proteins used in the HIV ELISA and WB are
unique constituents of an exogenous retrovirus, and if such a virus
induces specific antibodies, we would never expect to find "HIV"
antibodies in the absence of HIV. Yet, in addition to the circumstances
above, there are numerous others where antibodies to the "HIV
specific" proteins arise where HIV/AIDS experts concede there is no
HIV. These include healthy mice injected with lymphocytes of similar mice
(127) or bacterial extracts;(V. Colizzi et al., personal communication),
following transfusions of HIV free blood (128) or a person's own
irradiated blood,(129) and in 72/144 dogs tested at a Veterinary clinic in
Davis USA.(130) In addition, antibodies to the microbes which cause the
fungal and mycobacterial diseases affecting 90% of AIDS patients react
with the "HIV specific" proteins.(20,131) This year it was
reported that 35% of patients with primary biliary cirrhosis, 39% of
patients with other biliary disorders, 29% of those with lupus, 60% of
patients with hepatitis B, 35% of hepatitis C, all non-HIV, non-AIDS
diseases, have antibodies to the "HIV" p24 "core"
protein;(132)

Until 1990, an unknown number of the 4955 gay men
in the MACS were diagnosed HIV infected on the basis of an antibody to the
"HIV specific", p24 protein, that is, with one WB band. Why do
not all similar tests prove infection with HIV? Why are gay men with a
single, p24 band infected with a deadly virus while biliary and liver
disease patients with the same band are not? Why were the criteria for
diagnosing HIV infection set less rigorous in gay men? Although all HIV
experts accept cross-reactivity in HIV antibody testing, in 1993 the New
South Wales Department of Health interpreted the discovery of
"HIV" antibodies in four woman as "compelling
evidence" for transmission of HIV from a gay man during the course of
minor, office surgery in 1989.(133) However, there was no proof that the
gay man was HIV infected at the time of surgery, or that any of the four
women were operated on after the man. This report remains the only one of
its kind in the world and immediately led to the establishment of a
special committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons which
wrote to all College Fellows inviting submissions upon the matter.
However, rather than seizing upon the rarity of the event and following
advice urging a formal, scientific enquiry into whether "HIV"
antibodies are caused by infection with a retrovirus,(134) the College
accepted these data as proof of cross-infection but concluded "The
mode of transmission is unknown".(106 §§)

What proof is there for the
existence of HIV?

Scientific evidence for the existence of a
retrovirus must be consistent with the definition of a retrovirus as a
particular kind of replicating, microscopic particle. Thus researchers
must demonstrate the correct size, shape and construction of particles;
that these particles have been purified and analysed and contain RNA as
well as an enzyme that makes DNA from RNA (reverse transcription); and
that the particles are infectious, that is, when pure particles are
introduced into fresh cell cultures, identical progeny appear. The latter
necessitates a second round of purification and analysis. Indeed, although
this method is entirely logical and was deemed essential at a meeting held
at the Pasteur Institute in 1973,(135,136) it has been ignored by all HIV
researchers.

Although there are electron microscope (EM)
pictures from unpurified cell cultures of particles purported to be
"HIV", it was not until March 1997 that EMs of "purified
HIV" were published.(137,138) Yet such data is the first, most
essential step in attempts to prove particles are a virus, and for
subsequent extraction of constituents for analysis and use as diagnostic
reagents. These long awaited pictures reveal "purified HIV" to
be a tangle of cellular debris. Scattered amongst this are scant particles
which, without evidence, the authors claim are the HIV particles which
"copurify" (sic) with the cellular material. Close examination
of these particles as well as other evidence in the papers show they are
too large, wrongly shaped, have too high a mass and are devoid of knobs
HIV experts unanimously assert are absolutely essential for the
"HIV" particle to cause infection. It is from this material,
HIV/AIDS experts and biotechnology companies obtain proteins and RNA to
use in tests to pronounce humans infected with a unique, exogenous AIDS
causing microbe.

On July 17th 1997, the French investigative
television journalist Djamel Tahi interviewed Professor Luc Montagnier in
camera at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Montagnier was asked, "Why
do the EM photographs published by you [in 1983] come from the culture and
not the purification?". His reply was, "There was so little
production of virus it was impossible to see what might be in a
concentrate of the virus from the gradient ["pure virus"]. There
was not enough virus to do that. Of course one looked for it, one looked
for it in the tissues at the start, likewise the biopsy. We saw some
particles but they did not have the morphology typical of retroviruses.
They were very different. Relatively different. So with the [unpurified]
cultures it took many hours to find the first pictures. It was a Roman
effort!… Charles Dauget [an EM expert] looked at the plasma, the
concentrate, etc… he saw nothing major"(61) ( italics ours).
Questioned about the Gallo group he replied, "Gallo? I don’t know
if he really purified. I don’t believe so". This should have been
both the beginning and the end of HIV.

Retroviral-like particles are virtually
ubiquitous in biological material (139,140) including for example cell
cultures and "in the majority if not all, human placentas".(141)
(One should note that Montagnier’s "Roman effort" refers to
EMs obtained from umilical cord blood lymphocytes). However, as Gallo
confirms, because they do not replicate, the majority of retroviral-like
particles are not retroviruses.(139,142) The "HIV" particle has
been "classified" into two subfamilies and three genera of
retroviruses. This is analogous to describing a new species of mammal as
human, a gorilla and an orang-utan. Besides the "HIV" particle,
cell cultures contain other particles of numerous morphologies whose
origin and role are unknown.(18,143,144) A detailed study from Harvard
(145) revealed the identical "HIV" particle in 18/20 (90%) of
AIDS as well as in 13/15 (88%) of non-AIDS related lymph node
enlargements.

HIV experts claim to detect and even
"isolate" HIV merely by demonstrating "reverse
transcription" in cultures. However, although present in
retroviruses, reverse transcription is not, as many HIV/AIDS experts
claim, unique to retroviruses or even viruses.(146,147) Well before the
AIDS era Gallo himself showed that chemically stimulated (absolutely
essential to "isolate HIV" from cultures) lymphocytes, possess
this function.(148,149)

The "HIV" proteins
and antibodies

Although both Montagnier and Gallo have never
published EMs to prove the presence of retroviral-like particles in their
"pure virus", and Montagnier now concedes there were none, both
groups and all others since claim such material is "pure HIV".
This claim is based on the fact that such material contains proteins which
react with antibodies present in AIDS patients. However, this reasoning is
untenable. Imagine a scientist who mixes two solutions together, obtains a
precipitate and then proclaims the identity and source of several
reactants. One does not need a degree in chemistry to realise this is an
impossibility. Nonetheless, because cultures and antibodies derived from
AIDS patients react together, the proteins are declared to belong to
"HIV" and the antibodies the "HIV" specific
antibodies. In fact, Gallo admits that for him, an antibody test is the
quintessence of "HIV isolation". During an interview at the
Geneva AIDS conference he said, "Sometimes we had Western blot
positive but we couldn’t isolate the virus. So we got worried and felt
we were getting false positives sometimes so we added the Western blot.
That’s all I can tell you. It was an experimental tool when we added it
and for us it worked well, ‘cos we could isolate the virus when we did
it".(150) However, HIV isolation is not an antibody test and
"HIV" proteins can only be defined by extracting them from
particles purified and proven to be a retrovirus. Such material has never
been shown to exist and such extraction never reported. Notwithstanding,
since the mid 1980s, HIV researchers claim that the reaction between cell
cultures and an antibody to merely one, the p24 protein, is "HIV
isolation". Since "to isolate a virus" is to obtain
infectious particles separate from everything else, it is particularly
difficult to see how scientists can refer to a chemical reaction in this
manner.

The origin of the
"HIV" proteins

According to Eleopulos and her colleagues, all
data presented to date is consistent with the "HIV" proteins
being cellular. Using "HIV" antibodies as probes,
"HIV" proteins have been identified in the tissues of
persistently HIV negative, healthy individuals including blood platelet
and skin cells, thymus, tonsil and brain.(15) As a mark of the bewildering
status of the HIV theory, while HIV proteins could not be found in the
placentas of 75 HIV positive pregnant women,(151) they could be found in
the placentas of 25 healthy, HIV negative women.(152) That the HIV
proteins are cellular is further strengthened by a recent, two-part
experiment. Human lymphocytes, cultured in the absence of material from
AIDS patients, is "purified" as it would be to obtain the
"HIV" proteins. This "uninfected" material serves as a
"mock virus" in experiments involving both "HIV" and
"SIV" (simian [monkey] immunodeficiency virus, claimed similar
to "HIV"). Analysis of "mock virus" reveals
qualitatively a series of proteins bearing the same molecular weights as
the proteins of "real" virus, strongly suggesting that the
"HIV" proteins are cellular because the existence of HIV
proteins demands they appear exclusively in cultures derived from AIDS
patients.(137) In the second experiment, monkeys are immunised on several
occasions with "mock virus", a procedure which subsequently
protects them from a "challenge" with "real" SIV.(153,154)
However, immunisation is specific. Immunisation with hepatitis vaccine
does not protect against poliomyelitis. It relies on exposure of the
animal to material specific to the organism against which protection is
sought resulting in the production of specific antibodies by the immune
system. Since proteins from the cells in which "SIV" is
"grown" ("mock" virus), protects against
"real" SIV, these must be exceedingly similar if not identical.
That is, the "SIV", and by inference the "HIV"
proteins, are all cellular.

The "HIV genome"

As is the case with the "HIV" proteins,
the RNA purported to be the HIV genome has not been obtained from
particles purified and proven infectious but from the conglomerate
material described above. Molecular biologists have produced possibly more
information about the "HIV" genome than any other object in the
universe. Nonetheless, there are no reports of even one individual
possessing a complete, full-length "HIV" genome and there is no
agreement as to how many genes HIV possesses. Opinions have varied from
four through to eight, nine or ten. Man and chimpanzee DNA differ by less
than 2% but variation in the composition of the "HIV genome"
(derived from analysis of "pieces" measuring 2% to 30% of the
presumed total) measures between 3-40%. By comparison, two RNA containing
viruses (polio and influenza, the latter after 27 years of dormancy,) vary
by less than 1% as do RNA molecules self-assembled in test tubes denied
the organising influence of living cells.(155,156)

Given that the DNA sequence determines the
composition of a virus’s proteins, and the latter the physical,
biochemical and biological properties of a virus, how is it possible for
such variation to represent one and the same agent? For example, how is it
possible that HIV can induce the same antibodies and which can be
recognised in a universal antibody test containing the identical proteins?
Since, as the molecular biologist Duesberg reminds us, "there is a
range, a small range, in which you can mutate around without too much
penalty, but as soon as you exceed it you are gone, and you are not HIV
any longer, or a human any longer...then you are either dead or you are a
monkey, or what have you",(8) it is evident that whatever the
"HIV DNA genome" represents, it cannot be a virus.

Lessons from the past?

The evidence for the existence of Gallo’s
"first human" retrovirus (HL23V) was much stronger than that for
HIV.(20,25,157) However, in 1980 the antibodies to the HL23V proteins were
shown to occur following a large variety of common non-infectious factors
and in far more humans than could have ever developed leukaemia.(158,159)
Thus, from signifying that an "infectious mode of transmission [of
leukaemia] remains a real possibility in humans" and "infection
with an oncovirus [retrovirus] may be extremely widespread",(160) the
"first" human retrovirus abruptly disappeared from the annals of
science. At present no one, not even Gallo, believes it existed. In the
AIDS era experts recognise that antibodies to the "HIV specific"
proteins occur where there is no HIV and in many more individuals than
will ever develop AIDS. On what basis then does HIV still exist?

THE DISSIDENT CASE, POLITICS
AND PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY

The failures of the past fifteen years are fairly
and squarely affixed to the five Montagnier and Gallo 1983/84 Science
papers. That the titles of three of these papers contain the word
"isolation" and yet no such evidence was presented, must stand
as a memorial to the demise of editorial integrity. The dissident cases,
that HIV does not exist (Eleopulos), or if it does exist does not cause
AIDS (Eleopulos and Duesberg), ultimately implies there will be
devastating outcomes in terms of scientific credibility including the
failure of peer review, the reputations of many experts and non-experts, a
challenge to the trust the citizen places in the hands of government,
scientific and medical leaders as well as an uncertain period of ignominy
for the medical profession as a whole. Weaving a just resolution through
this maze of socio-medico-legal bedlam will require the utmost
perspicacity and tenacity from political leaders.

Perhaps there are already signs of quiet
beginnings with the 1994 return of the discovery of HIV to the French by
the Americans followed by the most recent admissions of Montagnier in his
1997 interview. Perhaps it is also written in the faces of the Nobel
Committee and the stubborn absence of a Nobel prize awarded for any of the
100,000 scientific papers representing HIV/AIDS research.

Exceptionalism

Over and above all the uncertainties surrounding
the HIV/AIDS debate, AIDS science and medicine must stand as the most
remarkable case of "exceptionalism" in history. The funding it
attracts far outstrips that justified by its prevalence and economic
impact.(161) For example, over the past 17 years Australia has a
cumulative total of 7,766 cases of AIDS including 5575 deaths.(162 ¥§)
The big spenders are (in order) the United States, France, the United
Kingdom, Germany and Italy. Their combined annual HIV/AIDS research budget
amounts to US$1.8 billion for a cumulative total of 761,572 AIDS patients
(many of whom are dead). Of an additional $US20 million spent by the
European Union in 1994-98, most "money goes to support travel and
meeting costs rather than laboratory research".(163) While thousands
of dollars per patient are spent on HIV/AIDS research, only a few dollars
are spent on heart disease, cancer, mental illness, suicide prevention or
road trauma. The funding paradox reaches epidemic, almost farcical
proportions in developing countries where Western AIDS workers spend their
days dispensing advice and condoms to a population dying for want of
potable water, adequate sanitation and nutrition, antibacterial,
antitubercular and antimalarial medicines. In a word, dying of poverty.

Currently, the annual cost of anti-HIV drugs for
one person costs about $US15,000 (which is greater than the entire health
budget for many a third world village). With 650,000 to 900,000 HIV
positive patients in the US as of July 1996, it would take $10 billion to
pay for drugs alone. This must be viewed against the World Health
Organisation's estimate that by the year 2000 there will be 30-40 million
HIV infected people. Without HIV, AIDS patients, specialist AIDS units and
their employees can rationally be absorbed into existing infrastructure of
clinics and hospitals. The pursuit of expensive drugs designed to kill HIV
will be irrelevant as will be the travail of the legions of HIV
researchers. The same applies to AIDS councils, the armies of AIDS
educators, AIDS fund raisers, volunteers and AIDS organisations. In the US
alone there are 93,000 of the latter, one for every four persons ever
diagnosed with AIDS.(34)

Clear thinking

Homo sapiens (thinking man), was not named in
vain. An honourable society provides unfettered information and encourages
its members to make rational choices. Epidemiology shows that the
development of a positive "HIV" antibody test and AIDS is not so
much related to a given sexual practice but rather to the frequency of
passive anal intercourse in both men and women. It follows that AIDS is
not a disease of sexual orientation. As far as women are concerned, it is
prudent to note that in absolute terms, innumerably more women than men
engage in anal intercourse. Thus AIDS is not unlike the case of the
recently appended AIDS defining disease cervical cancer which, long before
the AIDS era, was known to be related to the frequency of vaginal
intercourse. Even so, it is not the act itself but the very high
frequencies of the act which is pathogenic.

As serious as public reaction to an ill conceived
retrovirus may prove, it will not be anywhere as serious as the legal
backlash. There are countless individuals alive who believe they are
infected with a deadly microbe, many of whom are currently treated with
potentially toxic drugs with no proven benefit. They avoid intimacy, avoid
having children and sometimes even casual contact with others. It would
take a flotilla of poet laureates to voice the collective pain and
suffering engendered by such a mistake. It would take an army of
mathematically gifted lawyers to quantify, and the nation's coffers to
compensate, those who lives have been ruined by what Neville Hodgkinson
has called "the greatest scientific blunder of the 20th
century".(29) This is not to mention patients and relatives who have
died at their own hands. In 1987 former US Senator Lawton Chiles of
Florida told an AIDS conference of a tragic case where twenty two blood
donors were informed they were HIV infected on the basis of an ELISA test.
Seven then committed suicide.(164)

In June this year the Swiss AIDS analyst Michael
Baumgartner persuaded United Nations officials to include a dissident
session at the XIIth International AIDS Conference held in Geneva.
Speakers included Huw Christie, the editor of Continuum magazine, AIDS
analyst and documentary film maker Joan Shenton, epidemiologist Professor
Gordon Stewart, retrovirologist and electron microscopist Professor
Etienne de Harven, virologist Dr. Stefan Lanka and, by satellite from
Perth, Eleni Eleopulos and her group from the Royal Perth Hospital. In the
audience were observers from the Pasteur Institute and the US National
Institutes for Health. The topic of the session was a scientific critique
of the HIV antibody tests and the evidence for the existence of HIV. At
the official press conference held after the meeting, Professor Bernhard
Hirschel, chairman of the Organising Committee, accused the speakers of
"using outdated and untrustworthy scientific data". However, the
"outdated" data is that of Montagnier and Gallo which led to the
1984 proclamation that HIV is the cause of AIDS. That considered
"untrustworthy" is the HIV experts’ own data.

Notwithstanding these and many other challenges
to the current dogma, HIV/AIDS experts are not in the least disquieted by
sceptical patients, relatives or scientists and inveigh heavily against
inquisitive journalists alleging great harm to public health. Thus it
appears the only hope for an immediate resolution of this troubled issue
is lawyers appearing for plaintiffs desiring judgements that they are or
are not infected with an AIDS causing virus. However, even if an
examination of "HIV science" is destined to be scrutinised by
courts of law, at present one must be realistic that in the short term the
status quo is extremely unlikely to change.

A real debate?

Nonetheless, it is inexorably drawing nearer to
the time when world governments will convene an international, adjudicated
debate on this subject. In contrast to the 13,775 participants from 177
countries who attended the June Geneva AIDS Conference, this should be a
small gathering where a dozen or so experts from each side put their
respective cases to a disinterested group of scientists of the utmost
stature, for example, another dozen made up largely of Nobel laureates.
There is a precedent for such a ‘consensus conference’ or
‘conference de citoyens’ in common sense and "along the lines of
a model invented in Scandinavia and since applied in the United Kingdom
and elsewhere". A "jury" of 14 people "screened for
independence from interested parties" have issues "debated in
front of them by scientists, non-governmental organizations,
industrialists and other bodies…The power of public research bodies is
probably the best guarantee of independence with respect to private sector
research and the influence of multinationals".(165) By AIDS
standards, funding for such a meeting would be trivial. Indeed, such would
be its significance it would make money for the organisers.

Perhaps a disinterested observer could be
forgiven for concluding that, although we are approaching the eighteenth
year of the AIDS era, and have spent many billions of dollars on
treatments and research, the words of Duesberg continue to taunt us:
"By any measure, the war on AIDS has been a colossal failure...our
leading scientists and policymakers cannot demonstrate that their efforts
have saved a single life".(1) Perhaps those of Eleopulos group are of
even greater portent: "The single most important obstacle in finding
the explanation for AIDS is the belief in HIV.(19,26) In his recent book,
"Dancing Naked in the Mind Field", Dr. Kary Mullis writes,
"Years from now, people will find our acceptance of the HIV theory of
AIDS as silly as we find those who excommunicated Galileo".(2)
Indeed, it was Galileo who counseled, "In Science the authority
embodied in the opinion of thousands is not worth a spark of reason on one
man". Perhaps, seventeen years in, we should all pause, look around,
and then take a long look back.

The authors gratfully acknowledge the assistance
of Mr. Peter Bloch of General Media International and Penthouse Magazine
New York City for making available excerpts of Dr. Mullis’ forthcoming
book.

ENDNOTES

*US journalist Christine Johnson's interview (now
available in six languages) with the leader of the Perth group, was
reviewed by scholar and international gay media personality Professor
Camille Paglia, in her column in the US Salon magazine October 28th 1997:
"For a superb critique of the scandalously overpoliticized scientific
research on AIDS, see Christine Johnson's long interview with Australian
biophysicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos in the new issue of the British
AIDS magazine Continuum. The American major media have effectively
suppressed long-standing questions about whether the AIDS test is reliable
or whether an HIV virus in fact exists at all".

**On May 5th 1998, two US Republicans said they
were exploring ways to give a comfortable retirement to 1,500 chimpanzees
that were bred for AIDS research. Accompanied by primate expert Jane
Goodall, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Penn. said
they were working on a bill to set up sanctuaries for the chimps. The
chimps, bred in the United States specifically for AIDS research, did not
turn out to be the effective models that scientists had anticipated. With
no research use, the primates that are man's closest cousins are
languishing in cages at an annual cost of $US7.3 million.

§ In 1988, Eleopulos' paper that HIV does not
cause Kaposis' sarcoma was thrice rejected by the Medical Journal of
Australia on the advice of an "established expert". The reviewer
stated, "The author tries to argue that Kaposis' sarcoma cannot be
caused by HIV infection, and that therefore AIDS is not due to HIV
infection. The arguments put forward by the author are quite
unsatisfactory, and are not supported by even a desultory reading of the
literature quoted. In addition, the author fails to examine the body of
epidemiological, immunological and cellular literature concerning the
pathology, pathogenesis and clinical associations of this fascinating
manifestation of HIV infection". Yet this is the very
"epidemiological, immunological and cellular literature" which
eventually led the "established experts" to accept that
"this fascinating manifestation of HIV infection", is not caused
by HIV infection.

¥ Asked to comment at the Geneva conference on
the fact that England and Wales have dropped the use of the WB to
"confirm" positive HIV ELISAs, Gallo commented, "Well, the
bulk of the world uses it. If some technology comes across better I’d be
the first to say do it. I mean obviously. The Western blot’s a valuable
test as defining the proteins that you have antibodies to. Everybody uses
it experimentally and most people use it around the world. Not in
Eng…,Britain doesn’t use it, maybe there are two countries that have
found a better way. God bless them. OK?"

§§ In 1997 the Perth group attempted a second
time to engage the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in debating the
HIV/AIDS controversy by submitting a paper entitled "A critical
analysis of the evidence for the isolation of HIV" (www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/epappraisal.htm).
It is editorial policy to "welcome personal views of surgeons on a
variety of topics", and to publish papers on "current and
controversial issues". Although both reviewers accepted the bulk of
the scientific arguments and found the paper "interesting
reading", they advised against publication because, in their view, an
analysis of evidence for the isolation of HIV was of "no real
relevance…to a surgical audience" or "would be of little
interest or use to the majority of readers of the Australian and New
Zealand Journal of Surgery".

¥§ Of the 7766 Australian AIDS cases, 387 (5%)
are reported in the "heterosexual contact" exposure category.
However, 22 of these qualify on the basis of "Sex with injecting drug
user", 35 "Sex with bisexual male", 56 "From high
prevalence country" (where heterosexual spread is deemed dominant),
47 "Sex with HIV-infected person, exposure not specified", 170
"Not further specified". Thus injecting drug use, anal
intercourse in women, the presumption of any form of sexual intercourse
and lack of sufficient data question the mode of acquiring HIV infection
in at least 330 (85%) of individuals listed in this exposure category.

115. Anonymous. (1993). HIV infection in European
female sex workers: epidemiological link with use of petroleum-based
lubricants. European Working Group on HIV Infection in Female Prostitutes.
AIDS 7:401-8.

116. Anonymous. (1998). The HIV/AIDS/STD
epidemics in Asia and the Pacific. Australian HIV Surveillance Report
14:1-8.

134. Turner VF, Papadopulous-Eleopulos E. (1994).
Patient to patient transmission of HIV in a surgeon's private rooms:
Invited deposition to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. At
website www.virusmyth.com/aids/perthgroup/ .

158. Barbacid M, Bolognesi D, Aaronson SA.
(1980). Humans have antibodies capable of recognizing oncoviral
glycoproteins: Demonstration that these antibodies are formed in response
to cellular modification of glycoproteins rather than as consequence of
exposure to virus. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A 77:1617-1621.